Fifteensquared

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Archive for June 11th, 2007

Guardian 24,100 - Audreus/challenging

Posted by loonapick on 11th June 2007

loonapick.

This was quite tough for a Monday, with some obscure words mixed in with references to Shakespeare, mythology, ancient alphabets and poetry.  All in all, it was enjoyable to solve, and took me about 12 minutes.

ACROSS

1    RUMOUR HAS IT - (amour hurts I)*

10  NUNNERY - referring to Hamlet’s exhortation to Ophelia (”get thee to a nunnery”)

11  GO(L-DEN-R)OD - A North American flowering plant

12  SYBIL - hidden in “fantaSY BILingual” - I’m not sure if this is meant to be an &lit.  I know that there were several prophetesses known as Sibyls in ancient mythology, but I don’t know if any of them were bilingual

14  TONGUE-TIED - (due get it no)* - have now seen “falling” used as an anagrind on a couple of occasions, but I’m not sure about it.

16  FAR(SIGH)TED - one from the Paul school of crossword compiling, I fancy.

 19  (<=M.A.-GO) - Ogam (or Ogham) is an old Irish alphabet based on notches and lines.

22  TWENTY-ONE - one of the many names for blackjack, pontoon, vingt-et-un etc.  And 21 used to be considered the age of majority.

 26  T(H.E.)A-(<=GERT)-O-E.R.

DOWN

1  ROY-AL TOUR-NAME-N.T. - a military show which ran from 1880 to 1999 (except in wartime) and which involved bands and demonstrations by members of the Armed Forces.

4  HANG-DOG

5  SIN-IS-TER(n)

6  TREMBLING POPLAR - (mr big planter lop)* - a willow tree

7  SP(<=G.I.)OT

15  E(xperience)-NILE-D(umbhead)-IS

16  F(A ST.)EN

18  EPE(R.G.N.)E - a large decorative table centrepiece - RGN stands for Registered General Nurse

20  MAENAD - (named a)* - in Greek mythology, a female taking part in a Dionysian orgy

23  T(erritorial)-O.R.-(<=O/S) - OR being “other ranks” and O/S outsize(d)

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Independent 6443/Mass

Posted by neildubya on 11th June 2007

neildubya.

The last time I blogged a Mass puzzle I introduced it thus: “A compiler I usually struggle with but not on this occasion. There are some very nice clues in this but a couple that I don’t fully understand and a couple of (I think) weak puns/cryptic defs.” Today, I can probably say that I don’t struggle with Mass anymore, I think I understand most of the clues and there more than a couple of cryptic definitions. There were some very nice clues too.

Across
1 ESSEN(c)E - these people.
5 A,S in LACE - even if you’ve only recently started solving cryptics you probably expected “Doctor” to indicate DR or MB or MO as that’s a standard bit of crossword-ese. In this clue, however, indicates LACE, which was a nice touch I thought.
8 KIDNAPPER - cryptic def playing with the phrase “take issue”. I don’t find this particularly convincing though because although the word itself literally suggests the abduction of a child (”kid”), we apply the word to anyone who has been taken against their will.
12 GOLD BEATER - if this is right then, again, I think the cryptic def is quite weak and not very cryptic. I guess we’re supposed to be misled into thinking that “foils” is something to do with swords, when it actually refers to gold-leaf.
13 S in HARD,HIP
15 OC,TAD - funny how the simplest things can pass you by. I was fairly sure that OCTAD was the right answer but couldn’t see why “dash” = TAD. Obviously they both mean a small of amount of something.
19 BORDEAUX - “bore dough”
22 (NOVELIST IE)*
26 C,(WEATHER)*,L - looks like “cloudy” indicates C here but I can’t find that in the paper copy of COED or the online Chambers so I assume it appears elsewhere. Don’t think I’ve ever seen it used before but it could be a staple of advanced puzzles.
 
Down
4 UP in (HEROIC)* - nicely disguised definition.
6 TONE in SCOLD
7 (COTE LIT)* - COLETIT. I guessed this, although with “Bird” as the definition and TIT in the anagram fodder it wasn’t a tricky quess. Not sure I like “with a flutter” as the anagram indicator though.
8 (HEATED DRINK)* - The surface reading “Cordial, nutty heated drink” isn’t very convincing…
10 X in (RADIO)* in PA,CAL - …but it’s excellent in this one.
14 CR in (IS NEVER)* - SCRIVENER
16 MONOGRAM - I spent ages trying to work out the wordplay but I think it’s just a cryptic definition. Sorry to bang on like this but, again, it seems a bit weak.
20 ATHLETE - see previous clue.
21 PYCH,E - I liked this. “Prepare for ordeal” for PSYCH (as in “psych yourself up”) was surprising, for some strange reason.
24 S,WAN

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